What is the primary aim of James Webb Space Telescope?

JWST's primary aim is to shed light on our cosmic origins: it will observe the Universe's first galaxies, reveal the birth of stars and planets, and look for exoplanets with the potential for life.

ESA, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) have collaborated since 1996 on the definition of a successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST).

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a general-purpose observatory with a large aperture telescope optimised for infrared observations and a suite of state-of-the-art astronomical instruments capable of addressing many outstanding issues in astronomy.

JWST's investigations will cover questions such as: What did the early Universe look like? When did the first stars and galaxies emerge? How did the first galaxies evolve over time? What can we learn about dark matter and dark energy? How and where do stars form? What determines how many of them form and their individual masses? How do stars die and how does their death impact the surrounding medium? Where and how do planetary systems form and evolve?

The James Webb Space Telescope honours NASA's second administrator, James E. Webb, who headed the agency from February 1961 to October 1968, at the time of the Apollo programme. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was formerly known as the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST).

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What is vaccine complacency?

Complacency refers to when the perceived risks of vaccine-preventable diseases are low, and therefore vaccination is not deemed a necessary preventative action. Vaccination convenience is a significant factor when physical availability, affordability and accessibility affect uptake

Two months ago, India crossed the landmark figure of 100 crore administered vaccines—for the first and second dose combined. By December, 10, ~81 crore of its adult population received its first dose, with ~51 crore also having received a second dose so as to be admitted in the once elusive, fully vaccinated against COVID-19 club. While the figure is laudable for a developing country, it's important to continue examining our progress, especially as this impressive feat is occurring along with a dramatic decline in disease incidence since the peak of the second wave and a looming possible third wave driven by the new Omicron variant.

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What are nurdles?

Nurdles are tiny plastic pellets that form the raw materials of most of today’s plastic products and are made of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride and other plastics. They are melted down and cast into moulds to make various plastic products. Today, nurdles are rapidly degrading our oceans.

They are the raw material for everything that’s made of plastic. But even if they’re tiny, their damage is giant and immeasurable. Because of their size, it’s hard to keep them contained, and they spill into rivers, waterways, and the ocean. 

Nurdles come in all sorts of colors, and their size and shape make it very easy for marine life to mistake them for food. It’s been recorded that more than 220 species of marine animals ingest microplastics and plastic debris. 

Nurdles are made of polyethylene, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyvinyl chloride, or other plastic types. Also, in some cases, they contain different additives to create pellets of different densities.

Credit :  Ocean Blue

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What are white dwarfs?

The white dwarf consists of an exotic stew of helium, carbon, and oxygen nuclei swimming in a sea of highly energetic electrons. The combined pressure of the electrons holds up the white dwarf, preventing further collapse towards an even stranger entity like a neutron star or black hole.

The white dwarf now has before it a long, quiet future. As the trapped heat trickles out, it slowly cools and dims. Eventually it will become an inert lump of carbon and oxygen floating invisibly in space: a black dwarf. But the universe isn’t old enough for any black dwarfs to have formed. The first white dwarfs born in the earliest generations of stars are still, 14 billion years later, cooling off. The coolest white dwarfs we know of, with temperature around 4,000 degrees Celsius (7,000 degrees Fahrenheit), may also be some of the oldest relics in the cosmos.

But not all white dwarfs go quietly into the night. White dwarfs that orbit other stars lead to highly explosive phenomena. The white dwarf starts things off by siphoning gas off its companion. Hydrogen is transferred across a gaseous bridge and spilled onto the white dwarf’s surface. As the hydrogen accumulates, its temperature and density reach a flash point where the entire shell of newly acquired fuel violently fuses releasing a tremendous amount of energy. This flash, called a nova, causes the white dwarf to briefly flare with the brilliance of 50,000 suns and then slowly fade back into obscurity.

White dwarfs – the cores left behind after a star has exhausted its fuel supply – are sprinkled throughout every galaxy. Like a stellar graveyard, they are the tombstones of nearly every star that lived and died. Once the sites of stellar furnaces where new atoms were forged, these ancient stars have been repurposed as an astronomer’s tool that have upended our understanding of the evolution of the universe.

Credit : Earth Sky 

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Who was the first woman in space?

The first woman to travel into space was a Soviet cosmonaut named Valentina Tereshkova. She traveled around Earth 48 times while orbiting in the Vostok 6 spacecraft in 1963. The first American woman to travel into space was Sally Ride who rode onboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983 and 1984.

Born in the village of Maslennikovo northeast of Moscow, Tereshkova volunteered for the Soviet cosmonaut program after Yuri Gagarin made history as the first man to fly in space on April 12, 1961. She was not a pilot, but had extensive parachuting experience, with 126 jumps under her belt. (Gagarin parachuted to Earth, ejecting from the Vostok capsule during descent as part of the landing sequence.)

Tereshkova was one of four women who received 18 months of training for Vostok 6, and was ultimately selected to pilot the flight. The mission launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome two days after Vostok 5, piloted by cosmonaut Valeriy Bykovsky, with the two spacecraft's coming within 3 miles (5 kilometers) of each other. 

Tereshkova spent 70 hours in space and orbited Earth 48 times during her mission. Though an icon of Soviet space exploration, she never flew in space again and became a test pilot and instructor.

Credit : Space.com

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Who was the first human being to travel to space?

Yuri Gagarin was the first person to fly in space. His flight, on April 12, 1961, lasted 108 minutes as he circled the Earth for a little more than one orbit in the Soviet Union's Vostok spacecraft. Following the flight, Gagarin became a cultural hero in the Soviet Union. Even today, more than six decades after the historic flight, Gagarin is widely celebrated in Russian space museums, with numerous artifacts, busts and statues displayed in his honor. His remains are buried at the Kremlin in Moscow, and part of his spacecraft is on display at the RKK Energiya museum.

Gagarin's flight came at a time when the United States and the Soviet Union were competing for technological supremacy in space. The Soviet Union had already sent the first artificial satellite, called Sputnik, into space in October 1957.

Before Gagarin's mission, the Soviets sent a test flight into space using a prototype of the Vostok spacecraft. During this flight, they sent a life-size dummy called Ivan Ivanovich and a dog named Zvezdochka into space. After the test flight, the Soviet's considered the vessel fit to take a human into space.

Credit : Space.com

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Which spacecraft confirmed the presence of water molecule on Moon?

The Imaging Infrared Spectrometer (IIRS) instrument onboard the Chandrayaan-2 lunar orbiter has confirmed the presence of both hydroxyl ions (OH) and water molecules (H2O) on the surface of the moon.

It has further quantified the amount of water molecules present on the lunar surface regions it imaged, and distinguished parts of the moon that are water-rich from those that are scant in hydration.

Researchers used the data obtained by the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter's imaging infrared spectrometer (IIRS), an instrument that collects information from the Moon's electromagnetic spectrum, to understand the mineral composition of the satellite. They analysed data from three strips on the Chandrayaan-2 IIRS sensor for hydration, which led to "unambiguous detection of OH (hydroxyl) and H2O (water) signatures."

The research findings, published in the journal Current Science, state that hydration absorption was observed at all latitudes and surface types in varying degrees. "The initial data analysis from IIRS clearly demonstrates the presence of widespread lunar hydration and unambiguous detection of OH and H2O signatures on the Moon between 29 degrees north and 62 degrees north latitude," researchers said.

It was also observed from the data that the brighter sunlit highland regions at higher latitudes of the Moon were found to have higher hydroxyl or possibly water molecules. Scientists at the Indian Institute of Remote Sensing (IIRS) in Dehradun opine that the formation of hydroxyl and water on the Moon is due to space weathering, a process of interaction of solar winds with the lunar surface. This combined with impact events lead to chemical changes that further triggered the formation of reactive hydroxyl molecules.

Credit : India Today 

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Phobos and Deimos – these are the moons of which planet?

Mars' moons are among the smallest in the solar system. Phobos is a bit larger than Deimos, and orbits only 3,700 miles (6,000 kilometers) above the Martian surface. No known moon orbits closer to its planet. It whips around Mars three times a day, while the more distant Deimos takes 30 hours for each orbit. Phobos is gradually spiraling inward, drawing about six feet (1.8 meters) closer to the planet each century. Within 50 million years, it will either crash into Mars or break up and form a ring around the planet.

To someone standing on the Mars-facing side of Phobos, Mars would take up a large part of the sky. And people may one day do just that. Scientists have discussed the possibility of using one of the Martian moons as a base from which astronauts could observe the Red Planet and launch robots to its surface, while shielded by miles of rock from cosmic rays and solar radiation for nearly two-thirds of every orbit.

Like Earth's Moon, Phobos and Deimos always present the same face to their planet. Both are lumpy, heavily-cratered and covered in dust and loose rocks. They are among the darker objects in the solar system. The moons appear to be made of carbon-rich rock mixed with ice and may be captured asteroids.

Phobos has only 1/1,000th as much gravitational pull as Earth. A 150-pound (68 kilogram) person would weigh two ounces (68 grams) there. Yet NASA's Mars Global Surveyor has shown evidence of landslides, and of boulders and dust that fell back down to the surface after being blasted off the moon by meteorites.

Credit : NASA Science 

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Where is Joseph Lister’s monument found in London?

The Joseph Lister Memorial is a memorial to Joseph Lister, 1st Baron Lister by the sculptor Thomas Brock, situated in Portland Place in Marylebone, London. The memorial is positioned in the centre of the road opposite numbers 71 to 81 and is Grade II listed. It is close to Lister's home at 12 Park Crescent.

The memorial was unveiled by Sir John Bland-Sutton, President of the Royal College of Surgeons, on 13 March 1924. The base of the monument is made of grey Aberdeen granite. On top of the base is a bronze bust of Joseph Lister. At the front are the figures of a woman and a boy: the boy is holding a garland of flowers; the woman is pointing to Lister with her right hand.

Lister’s work had been largely misunderstood in England and the United States. Opposition was directed against his germ theory rather than against his “carbolic treatment.” The majority of practicing surgeons were unconvinced; while not antagonistic, they awaited clear proof that antisepsis constituted a major advance. Lister was not a spectacular operative surgeon and refused to publish statistics. Edinburgh, despite the ancient fame of its medical school, was regarded as a provincial centre. Lister understood that he must convince London before the usefulness of his work would be generally accepted.

His chance came in 1877, when he was offered the chair of Clinical Surgery at King’s College. On October 26, 1877, Lister, at King’s College Hospital, for the first time performed the then-revolutionary operation of wiring a fractured patella, or kneecap. It entailed the deliberate conversion of a simple fracture, carrying no risk to life, into a compound fracture, which often resulted in generalized infection and death. Lister’s proposal was widely publicized and aroused much opposition. Thus, the entire success of his operation carried out under antiseptic conditions forced surgical opinion throughout the world to accept that his method had added greatly to the safety of operative surgery.

More fortunate than many pioneers, Lister saw the almost universal acceptance of his principle during his working life. He retired from surgical practice in 1893, after the death of his wife in the previous year. Many honours came to him. Created a baronet in 1883, he was made Baron Lister of Lyme Regis in 1897 and appointed one of the 12 original members of the Order of Merit in 1902. He was a gentle, shy, unassuming man, firm in his purpose because he humbly believed himself to be directed by God. He was uninterested in social success or financial reward. In person he was handsome, with a fine athletic figure, fresh complexion, hazel eyes, and silver hair. For some years before his death, however, he was almost completely blind and deaf. Lister wrote no books but contributed many papers to professional journals. These are contained in The Collected Papers of Joseph, Baron Lister, 2 vol. (1909).

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What acid did Joseph Lister use as an antiseptic?

After taking an arts course at University College, London, he enrolled in the faculty of medical science in October 1848. A brilliant student, he was graduated a bachelor of medicine with honours in 1852; in the same year he became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and house surgeon at University College Hospital. A visit to Edinburgh in the fall of 1853 led to Lister’s appointment as assistant to James Syme, the greatest surgical teacher of his day, and in October 1856 he was appointed surgeon to the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. In April he had married Syme’s eldest daughter. Lister, a deeply religious man, joined the Scottish Episcopal Church. The marriage, although childless, was a happy one, his wife entering fully into Lister’s professional life.

When three years later the Regius Professorship of Surgery at Glasgow University fell vacant, Lister was elected from seven applicants. In August 1861 he was appointed surgeon to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, where he was in charge of wards in the new surgical block. The managers hoped that hospital disease (now known as operative sepsis—infection of the blood by disease-producing microorganisms) would be greatly decreased in their new building. The hope proved vain, however. Lister reported that, in his Male Accident Ward, between 45 and 50 percent of his amputation cases died from sepsis between 1861 and 1865.

In this ward Lister began his experiments with antisepsis. Much of his earlier published work had dealt with the mechanism of coagulation of the blood and role of the blood vessels in the first stages of inflammation. Both researches depended upon the microscope and were directly connected with the healing of wounds. Lister had already tried out methods to encourage clean healing and had formed theories to account for the prevalence of sepsis. Discarding the popular concept of miasma—direct infection by bad air—he postulated that sepsis might be caused by a pollen-like dust. There is no evidence that he believed this dust to be living matter, but he had come close to the truth. It is therefore all the more surprising that he became acquainted with the work of the bacteriologist Louis Pasteur only in 1865.

Pasteur had arrived at his theory that microorganisms cause fermentation and disease by experiments on fermentation and putrefaction. Lister’s education and his familiarity with the microscope, the process of fermentation, and the natural phenomena of inflammation and coagulation of the blood impelled him to accept Pasteur’s theory as the full revelation of a half-suspected truth. At the start he believed the germs were carried solely by the air. This incorrect opinion proved useful, for it obliged him to adopt the only feasible method of surgically clean treatment. In his attempt to interpose an antiseptic barrier between the wound and the air, he protected the site of operation from infection by the surgeon’s hands and instruments. He found an effective antiseptic in carbolic acid, which had already been used as a means of cleansing foul-smelling sewers and had been empirically advised as a wound dressing in 1863. Lister first successfully used his new method on August 12, 1865; in March 1867 he published a series of cases. The results were dramatic. Between 1865 and 1869, surgical mortality fell from 45 to 15 percent in his Male Accident Ward.

In 1869, Lister succeeded Syme in the chair of Clinical Surgery at Edinburgh. There followed the seven happiest years of his life when, largely as the result of German experiments with antisepsis during the Franco-German War, his clinics were crowded with visitors and eager students. In 1875 Lister made a triumphal tour of the leading surgical centres in Germany. The next year he visited America but was received with little enthusiasm except in Boston and New York City.

Credit : Britannica 

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Who was Joseph Lister?

Joseph Lister was a British medical scientist and a pioneer in preventive medicine. He was the founder of antiseptic medicine, which helped prevent infection during and after surgery. His antisepsis principles laid the foundation of modern infection control Joseph Lister was born in 1827 in Essex, now in London, into a prosperous family. His father Joseph Jackson Lister was a wine merchant and an amateur physicist and microscopist. His discovery led to the modern achromatic microscope.

Soon after graduating in medicine in 1852, Lister became a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons and house surgeon at University College Hospital in London. In 1861, he was appointed surgeon to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, where he was in charge of wards in the surgical block. At that time, wound infections were a common occurrence that frequently killed patients. Doctors did not then realise that patients were dying of operative sepsis, an infection of the blood by disease-producing microorganisms. Between 1861 and 1865 alone, Lister noted that about 50% of his amputation cases died (from sepsis).

Eureka moment

Lister’s moment of realisation came when he read about Louis Pasteur’s research onputrefaction. He realised that the process behind fermentation might also be involved with wound infection. In his ward, Lister began his experiments with antisepsis. He found an effective antiseptic in carbolic acid, which had already been used as a means of cleansing sewers and had been empirically advised as a wound dressing in 1863. This proved extremely effective at preventing sepsis and gangrene. Lister first successfully used his new method in 1865, and in 1867, published a series of cases. The sepsis cases in his ward came down drastically. His recommendations met with some resistance in the medical profession, but eventually came to revolutionise surgery.

Many firsts

Lister also has many firsts to his credit. He was the first person to isolate bacteria in pure culture (Bacillus lactis) using liquid cultures containing either Pasteur’s solution. Lister also pioneered the use of catgut and rubber tubing for wound drainage. He also showed that urine could be kept sterile after boiling in swan-necked flasks.

In 1883 Queen Victoria made him a Baronet, of Park Crescent in the Parish of St Marylebone in the County of Middlesex. He was appointed one of the 12 original members of the Order of Merit in 1902. Lister is one of the two surgeons in the United Kingdom who have the honour of having a public monument in London. Lister's stands in Portland Place.

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What can a drop of water show you Lots of things, it seems!

What you need

A glass bottle

Food colour

Modelling day Drinking straw

A small op

A sketch pen

What to do:

1. Plug the mouth of the glass bottle with the modelling day

2. Insert the straws into the clay and then pull it out leaving a straw sized hole in the clay. Make sure you clear out the clay caught in the straw.

3. In the cup, mix a little water with a few drops of food colouring.

 4. Dip the straw into the water. Then dose the top end with your thumb so that a drop of water enters the straw

5. Make the straw horizontal and release your thumb, letting the water drop ride back towards your hand when it is somewhere in the centre of the straw re-plug the top with your thumb.

6. Keep the plug with your thumb constant as you push the straw through the hole in the modelling day. Squeeze the day until you have a seal around the straw. Then release your thumb.

7. Place the bottle on a stable surface. Mark the initial position of the drop on the straw with a sketch pen.

8. Now, hold the bottle in both hands while it rests on the table. Observe the drop.

9. Let go of the bottle and let it stand on the table.

What happens :

When you hold the bottle, you see the water drop slowly crawl up the straw. When the bottle is left on its own, the water drop Moves down again. Why?

The bottle is full of air. In fact that is why the drop does not simply slide down the straw when you plug it into the clay seal. The air holds the drop up in the straw.

When you hold the bottle, your body heat warms it up. This causes the air inside the bottle to warm up as well. And warmer air expands. This causes the water drop to move up as the expanding air looks for a way out.

When you let go of the bottle, it cools down gradually. The cooling air contracts and the water drop down again.

You can try this experiment by putting the glass bottle in a hot water basin and then a cold water basin, you want to see drastic changes in the position of the water droplet.

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In the medieval era, forts and castles often had high walls that could not be crossed Catapults then began to be used to attack over those walls.

What you need:

A staple remover (the clawed kind) A sturdy file or folder

Sticky tape

Scissors

A plastic spoon

 A small ball of foil

What to do:

1. Stick the staple remover (the broader side) to the top of the folder using glue or sticky tape. The staple remover should be firm and steady once stuck

2. Next place the stem of the spoon against the top of the staple remover and tape it. The spoon should rest steadily against the length of the staple remover and its end should line up with the end of the staple removers top.

3. Place the roll of foil in the spoon.

 4. Gently pull the head of the spoon down and let go.

What happens:

The ball of foil flies off the catapult you made.

Why?

The catapult is a combination of several simple things. First comes the lever, which is the simplest form of a machine. A lever is a bar resting on a support. One end of the lever usually holds the load while the other end is used to apply pressure to move that load. The support on which the lever rests is known as the fulcrum. It is the fulcrum which makes it easy to transfer force from one end of the lever to another which allows the load to

In our case, there are two levers held together by a spring. The first lever is the staple remover its fulcrum is the end that is opposite the claws where the joint is.

The second lever is the spoon. Its fulcrum is the part that is stuck to the staple remover.

Both these levers are joined by a spring that's inside the staple remover. This spring is what allows the spoon to snap back up when released and throw the ball of foil.

You can place a book inside the folder which forms the base. This will allow you to change the angle of the catapult. You can find out how that affects your throw.

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Air can lift heavy objects. Try this experiment and you will believe it for yourself

What you need:

A Ziploc bag

A big heavy book

A straw

Modeling clay

What to do:

1. Open the zip of the Ziploc bag just a bit and insert one end of the straw into it

 2. Using the modelling clay. Seal the bag around the straw. That way the zip is closed and the straw is sealed in. No air can enter or leave the bag except through the straw.

3. Now, place the bag under the book in such a way that the straw inside it should hang off the edge of the table that the bag is resting on

4. Blow hard through the straw.

What happens?

 The bag inflates and the book is lifted off the table!

Why?

When you blow air into the bag, you are pushing air in and compressing it. This compressed air pushes against the bag which in turn pushes against the book, lifting it up.

This is also how tyres on our bicycles work. They are filled with compressed air that can take our entire weight!

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Can you switch on a tube light using a balloon? Aren't you tempted to try it out?

What you need:

A balloon

A fluorescent lamp or fluorescent the light

 What to do:

1. Inflate the balloon and knot in mouth closed

2. Dim the lights of the room.

 3. Rub the inflated balloon vigorously over your hair or on a woollen sweater

4 Touch the balloon to the two metal electrodes at the end of the tube

What happens:

When the balloon is touching the metal prongs, the tube lights up for a few moments.

Why?

This happens due to static electricity. Static means stationary. When you rub two objects against each other (like the balloon and your hair), they develop stationary electrical charges .To understand why this happens. We have to go to the microscopic level. Everything in our world is made up of tiny particles called 'atoms.

These atoms are, in turn, made up of even smaller particles known as electrons, protons and neutrons. The protons and neutrons remain inside the atom but the electrons like to use any excuse to jump in and out of the atom. When you rub two objects together, the electrons from one object jump to the other. This exchange of electrons is what is termed as electrical charge.

When the balloon is rubbed over hair, electrons jump from our hair to the balloon and stay there.

A fluorescent tube light is usually coated on the inside with a white material (known as a phosphor) and is filled with mercury gas.

When you plug in the fluorescent tube, an electric current is passed through it. Electricity is nothing but the movement of electrons. These electrons dash through the mercury gas, causing it to emit ultraviolet light.

Ultraviolet light is able to the human. That's where the phosphor coating comes in. This coating absorbs ultraviolet light and releases visible light instead.

When you hold the charged balloon dose to the metal prongs of the light the electrons jump from the balloon to the tube (since metal is a good conductor), causing it to light up. This light remains until all the electrons at the point of contact (where the balloon meets the prongs) are used up.

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